


we whisper together

by mnemememory



Series: breaking even [5]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Fletching and Moondrop Travelling Carnival of Curiosities, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, spoilers for episode 25
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 01:39:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15183908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemememory/pseuds/mnemememory
Summary: For as long as Molly can remember, when he wakes up, Yasha is gone.(or; growing into new bones is hard)





	we whisper together

**we whisper together**

_..._

_..._

_Empty, empty, empty –_

“I know, I know.”

_Empty, empty, empty –_

“You need to, uh, eat. You’re very weak at the moment.”

_Empty, empty, empty –_

…

…

For as long as Molly can remember, when he wakes up, Yasha is gone.

Not always. Not even close. Most of the time, she’s just within reach, close enough to touch. He puts his arms around her shoulders and kisses her forehead and basks in her silent presence, content. It’s so easy to get lost in his head, but not with Yasha around. When she’s there, the world is still a thing, and he exists in it.

The circus is a life. It’s not easy, or hard, or much of anything in the beginning. Molly doesn’t know anything else, of course, but it’s a life, and he’s content with it. With the roving, with the people. Especially with the people. Molly has been very lucky with his people.

And with Yasha. Molly has been very, very lucky with Yasha.

_Keep an eye on our girl_ , Gustav says, three flagons in. _She’s touch, but she needs watching. I’m sure you’ll do fine._

It’s funny. Sometimes, Molly can’t even remember which of them came first. It’s always been Molly-and-Yasha (though sometimes it’s just Molly and Yasha), when the night comes down and fire lights up the sky. _Welcome_ , Gustav shouts to the expectant crowd, _To the Fletching and Moondrop Travelling Carnival of Curiosities!_

Every time, it’s a little like coming home.

…

…

The firs time Yasha leaves, it’s in the middle of the night.

This is routine, supposedly, because she doesn’t even gather her things. There’s a storm on the way, frigid breeze pulling unkindly against the canvas tents. Molly has just spent the last few hours roping things securely to the ground, and doesn’t much care for going outside.

Yasha pushes past him on his way inside, shivering and a little miserable. His clothing is a mess of soaked fabric and dripping ink, and he weighs at least twice as much as he should. Molly is ready to curl up in a corner and pass out.

“You really shouldn’t go outside right now,” Molly says.

Yasha glances at him, and there’s something wrong about her face. She looks almost feverish, her eyes very bright. After a short pause, she steps out and vanishes into the night.

“Don’t worry about it,” Gustav says the next day, when Molly begins to realise with a sinking heart that _Yasha has not come back_. “It happens, every now and again. She’ll find us eventually.”

“We’re leaving tomorrow,” Molly frets, running a hand across the hilt of his blade. “What if she can’t?”

“She’ll find us,” Gustav says, grin wide enough to catch Molly off guard. “No matter how far we go, she always manages it, somehow.”

Molly remains unconvinced.

(Three nail-biting days later, in a different town, Yasha comes back with a black eye and bruises tattooing down her collarbone. Molly greets her with a smile and very carefully doesn’t ask where she went).

…

…

The seventh time Yasha leaves, Molly sneaks a bread roll into her pockets. For luck.

…

…

When Molly is ten, he doesn’t exist. When he twelve, he doesn’t exist. Up until two years ago, Mollymauk Tealeaf did not exist.

His blood burns anyway.

“Yasha,” Molly says. The circus is dead, carved into neat little slivers by a demon fucking toad. Molly finds himself on shaky ground, watching the night waste into something that resembles morning. The moon is fat and high above their sheltered heads, stars pinpricks of light. The windows are open, and from that Molly can see, there isn’t a cloud in the sky. “I think we’ll have to be very careful.”

The rest of their merry little band of compatriots are up and asleep, tucked daintily into beds. Molly should be up there, but he needs a drink. For all the newness and shininess of their travelling band of idiots, his world is gone (again, again), and he needs a drink. As always, Yasha is a delightful drinking companion.

“ _You_ will have to be careful,” Yasha says, not looking up from her flagon of ale. “I’m, uh.”

“You’re leaving soon,” Molly says. There’s a sinking in the pit of his stomach, but not much of one. Things break. There’s always been something in Molly that knows this. Dying can’t bleed away the lessons of his forebearer, though it has certainly purged everything else.

(They hadn’t known what to say, at the first flinch, the first sneer.

_Demon child_ , someone spat, making the sign for evil and moving away too fast for Bo to grab.

But Molly had said, _I know_ , and they left it at that).

Yasha nods.

“No matter,” Molly says, slinging a comfortable arm around Yasha’s elbow. He craves the contact, lets himself linger a little before retracting the hand. Yasha doesn’t seem to mind. “I’ll find my own way.”

“I’ll find you,” Yasha says. “When I, well. When I finish.”

“I believe you,” Molly says, and it isn’t even a lie.

…

…

_Empty, empty, empty –_

“Sit down. Stop – pacing. You’re about to collapse.”

_Empty, empty, empty –_

“Yes, I know.”

_Empty, empty, empty –_

…

…

Yasha leaves again.

And again.

And again.

Molly loses track. He doesn’t lose the ache, the hollowness the boils in the bottom of his gut, but he loses the edge. Every scrape along her knuckles is a badge; he makes her soak them. Every slice along her forearm is a trophy; he sews her skin back together.

“Take more antiseptic,” Molly says, instead of, “Where did you go? What did you do?” It’s a good system. “These are going to get infected, one day. I know people say that girls are into scars, but I don’t think –”

Yasha ducks her head and blushes right the way to the tips of her ears.

“I think that’s – that’s irrelevant,” she says.

Molly leans forward, tugging a little less gently at the thread. “No, no,” he says. “I think I’m making an _excellent_ point. Just because you think it’ll make girls like you better doesn’t mean you should continue with this nonsense. You have a vast array of attractive qualities, my dear.”

“I’m going to punch you,” Yasha says, hiding her face behind her curtain of hair. Molly watches her, delighted.

“If you’re really that desperate to get laid,” he says. “I’m sure I can find _someone_ in town – you’re a very lovely woman, Yasha, and –”

Yasha grabs the closest thing to her person – which happens to be a medium-to-large piece of timber – and throws it in Molly’s general direction. He narrowly avoids a concussion and several loose teeth only by the quickness of his reflexes.

“Noted, noted,” Molly says with a small laugh, tying up his stitching with a flourish. “I’ll let you find your own dates.”

(She comes back. Yasha doesn’t always leave well – doesn’t tell anyone beforehand or pack her things into their proper travel arrangements. But she always comes back).

…

…

Molly gathers himself in the way he sees other people, in the way he watches and listens and talks. He comes from the dirt, after all, so from here there’s nowhere to go but up.

And these people, his chosen – by fortune, if not entirely by choice – well. They are very good at performing.

_Welcome_ , he says, flinging his hands to a packed crowd. _To the greatest night of your lives!_

_Hey_ , he says, crouching in front of someone lost and sad and scared. His fingers automatically thumb across his deck of cards. _Let me help you_.

_My name is Mollymauk Tealeaf_ , he says, and if it doesn’t site quite right on his tongue the first time around, that’s fine. He’ll make it work.

…

…

Yasha leaves. She comes back.

…

…

_I don’t remember_ , is what he says.

It’s the truth. As much of the truth as he can rip out of his chest, in any case. The suffocation of it sits, vice-like. He clawed himself from the brink, and the knowledge of it never goes away. He wakes up, and he can’t breathe. He stands, still and silent, and he can’t breathe. So many things, in so many places, Molly finds himself unable to breathe.

Yasha finds him, because they have somehow become inseparable. _Joined at the hip_ , the others joke. Yuli gives him the stink-eye, and Mora just laughs at her sister. Gustav sings their praises to anyone who will listen – _My fortune teller and his bodyguard_ , he boasts. Toya is small and still, when she isn’t singing. Kylre exists.

Yasha finds him, like she finds everything. Molly wonders about that, when his lungs work and his tongue works and his smile stretches bright and thin. He’ll ask, one day: _How do you always come back?_

(How do you keep yourself together, our there, on your own?)

But in the moment, Molly is sitting very quiet and very calm in the corner of the tent, throat raw and teeth jagged. Blood wells under his sharpened fingertips, puncturing the skin of his forearm. Little flecks of ice break from his wrist and fall to the ground. His arm is free of ink, at the moment, though it won’t be for much longer.

“Hey,” Yasha says, kneeling in front of him. She holds out her hand, but she doesn’t do anything else.

“Hey,” Molly says. He leans heavily back against the support pole, muscles tense enough to burst.

“Toya said she saw you come in here,” Yasha says. “You didn’t show up. To pitch the main tent.”

“And – and let me guess. Ornna was –”

Molly doubles over, clutching his bloody arm to his chest. The half-frozen sludge smears across his shirt. His lungs rebel.

Yasha sits down in front of him and helps him time his breathing.

…

…

_Empty, empty, empty –_

…

…

Molly would like to think of himself as a good person.

He hadn’t been lying, when he said that. Couldn’t have been lying, even if he’d wanted to. _Are you a good person_? What kind of question is that?

He’d like to think of himself as a good person.

He’s not.

Looking at the blood on the ground, at the clear signs of a fight, at the scabbed-over trees – Molly knows, right down to the demonic blood boiling through his veins, that he is a terrible person. The kind people see when they look at him – bruise-purple skin, red eyes, sharp teeth. He’s a mother’s worst nightmare clad in decency and civility, and every step he takes further away from their campsite is stripping that away. He is every inch the monster people say he is.

_I’ll find you. When I finish._

Molly is going to burn down the entire fucking world until he gets his best friend back.

…

…

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot. it seemed…thematically appropriate :P
> 
> I’m…not great with this. I seem to be writing a lot of melodramatic, nonlinear things these days, haha. I’m gonna try to break from that next week!


End file.
